Oregon governor John Kitzhaber to resign over 'surreal' corruption scandal
Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon will step down, capping four months of controversy about his fiancee’s roles as a state contractor and first lady.
Kitzhaber will be replaced by secretary of state Kate Brown, effective next Wednesday, according to a statement from the governor’s office, quoted by Oregon Live.
“I apologize to all those people who gave of their faith, time, energy and resources to elect me to a fourth term last year and who have supported me over the past three decades,” he said in the statement.
Among other allegations, Kitzhaber is accused of steering contracts to his fiancee’s environmental consulting firm. His fiancee, Cylvia Hayes, is accused of using public office to further private interests.
A controversial figure, Hayes has also come under scrutiny for having married an 18-year-old Ethiopian man in 1997, for $5,000 and to help him secure residency in the US, and for participating in the same year in a plan to buy land in a remote part of Washington state, for the purpose of growing marijuana.
Now, a criminal investigation, an ethics investigation and an accompanying scandal have left Kitzhaber, a Democrat with almost four decades in state politics behind him, surrounded by colleagues calling for him to step down.
“The senate president and I were clear that we thought it was the best course of action to resign,” the Democratic speaker of the Oregon house, Tina Kotek, told the Oregonian, the state’s most influential newspaper. “Our actions today and our actions going forward are focused on rebuilding the public’s trust in state government.”
The two met in 2002, the Oregonian reported, when Hayes made an unsuccessful bid to be elected to the Oregon house of representatives. By 2003, Kitzhaber had divorced his wife and was dating Hayes, the paper said. Hayes set up an environmental consulting nonprofit, 3E Strategies, which in 2009 converted to a for-profit entity. It pulled in profitable contracts from the state.Over the last four days, Kitzhaber had sent conflicting messages about whether he will leave office. The affair started to heat up four months ago, when the governor began to respond to allegations about Hayes’s role in state government.
Kitzhaber served as governor from 1995 to 2003. Before he was elected in 2011 for a third term, Hayes was receiving lucrative government consulting contracts from the governor’s office, the Oregonian reported. The paper said the Oregon department of justice investigated Hayes’s business in 2010, but did not find enough enough evidence to sue.
In the past two weeks, the Oregonian learned that close associates of Kitzhaber may have attempted to “make jobs” for Hayes. The paper called for the governor’s resignation. Adding to an ongoing Oregon government ethics commission investigation, the state attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, launched a criminal investigation into Kitzhaber’s administration and Hayes’s role within it.
Rosenblum also ordered emails between Hayes and Kitzhaber be released. One day before the criminal investigation was launched, the Willamette Weekreported, Kitzhaber apparently tried to destroy thousands of emails.
Many believed preparations were being made for the governor’s resignationearlier this week, but on Thursday it was clear the governor wanted to stay in office.
As much was said in a statement from the Oregon secretary of state, Kate Brown, who is next in line for the governor’s office. Brown said she had been called back from Washington to meet the governor.
“It was a brief meeting. He asked me why I came back early from Washington DC, which I found strange,” said a press release emailed to and tweeted by reporters at KATU TV. “The governor told me he was not resigning, after which, he began a discussion about transition … This is clearly a bizarre and unprecedented situation.
“I informed the governor that I am ready, and my staff will be ready, should he resign,” Brown said. “Right now I am focused on doing my job for the people of Oregon.”
Oregonian reporters dubbed Thursday “one of the most surreal days in Oregon political history”.
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